Taking a Necessary Break - a Review

I've reached a point in my editing where I'm almost done with a first pass-through, and really I just want to get writing again.

I think that's really exciting for me, because it's been so rare the past few years where I've actively wanted to write, and not just felt like I should because I hadn't in a while. I have ideas I'm excited to get down on the page and it's killing me that I made this dumb rule. I'm actually thinking about discarding the dumb rule - I'm editing stuff at this point that is going to change completely once I start fixing the things in the beginning.

But I've gotten so much done with it that I decided to take a day off. I was planning on going to to edit yesterday night, but a Facebook message completely derailed any plans that I had. I ended up heading out with a college friend to a trivia night at a local brewery - a brewery I didn't even know existed until a few months ago, and had never been to.

Newburgh Brewing Company is definitely one of the coolest places in my relatively inconsequential area. I wish all my friends lived closer so we could go there on a regular basis...the great big taproom has a dozen heavy wooden tables, ping-pong, Donkey Kong, and a stack of board games in the corner that would be perfect for pulling out and nursing a beer over. I don't even like beer that much - any other time I've been given it it's been a lot of sipping and making funny faces like a dog licking a lime. But I ended up drinking an entire glass of their riverBREW Crown Maple Irish Red, sampling the Chile Lime Stout (which burned like chili chocolate and is one of the weirdest/coolest things I've ever consumed) and tried a sip of my friends Brown Ale. Honestly I wish I had had more cash on me, because the Brown Ale was delicious and I should have at least bought a growler of it. I'm disappointed I didn't. I might go back soon and get one anyway. I've never been this into beer before.



The trivia night was super fun, barring the two questions I missed that I totally should have gotten because the answers were two of the biggest staples of my childhood, Little Monsters and Black Beauty. But shame aside, I'm so glad I went. The best part? It's right along the riverfront, so when the rain last night finally stopped, I got this as my view for the contest.

Excuse the screen, nobody really wants drunks falling to their deaths.

Also? They had a food truck parked outside that had this weird flatbread food called flammkucen. I went ahead and bought one despite never having had it before (I was determined to make this a night of successful firsts) and the only thing I regret is that I didn't have the money to go back to buy their dessert flavor afterwards.

My weird flammkucen and mostly-finished Crown Maple

It wasn't really a late night out - I got home at 9:30 and ended up with nothing else to do unless I wanted to dive back into what seems more and more like superfluous editing, and I wasn't really in the mood. And if there's one thing I've learned, there really is a time and a place to force myself onto a story. Yes, making yourself write is important. But I think you can learn to gauge whether or not sitting and staring at a bunch of words - or worse, a blank screen - is actually going to accomplish anything or if it's worth it to go bide your time elsewhere until you're ready to work again.

I decided to bide my time. And like many others before me, I turned to Netflix.

Popping some clothes into the laundry machine and settling down next to my Ugly doll Babo and the self-made Danda Bear with a homemade chai latte, I decided to finally watch Shakespeare in Love.

And gosh, am I glad I did.

I've never had a movie worm its way into my heart the way that one did. It's seriously one of my favorites now, and I'm fairly certain I would never have appreciated so much of it before college and the slew of Elizabethan studying I did. A thousand standing ovations for the hilarity of the running John Webster gag. A hundred thousand skipped heartbeats for every look between Shakespeare and Viola. A million tears for the ending, leaving me sitting in silence and in love with even the very idea of love.

I'm so happy I took the night off.